Strange update to what's happening. When I finally get into a house, I'm able to play for only a little bit and then the sims suddenly freeze. I'm then unable to click any furniture or activities to give them things to do and they all just stand there looking around -- they don't even do NPC sim stuff like randomly grab water while waiting for a command. I've gone into build mode as well and they still stand there and stare around WHILE I'm in build mode which is super weird. I've also tried to do the cheat code stuff like Shift+click but nothing comes up and resetSim which also doesn't work.
I've also noticed that if I start a new save, it loads fine and quickly. So I'm wondering if it's my save file. If so, I'm going to be devastated; I put so many hours into this file.